


Lost in Time

by Penopy



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-24
Updated: 2019-02-24
Packaged: 2019-11-05 00:30:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17908628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Penopy/pseuds/Penopy
Summary: She knew her eyes must be glinting gold in the fire light, encouraged by the magic churning around the both of them but no matter how turbulent or powerful the magic, Tom continued to reverently stroke her cheek with his thumb, his unfathomable eyes on hers.  “Don’t look at me like that, Tom.” She whispered. “I’m a monster.”“And so what if you are?” He asked. “‘You are magnificent.”





	Lost in Time

**_North of France_ **

**_1943 September 19_ **

 

_It had all started innocently enough_ , Hermione supposed, knocking her head back against the wall and taking several deep breaths, ignoring the pain in her side and the loud shouts and crashes of spell fire several rooms away. She had been wrong-footed to discover that she had had any innocence left when she had arrived several decades in the past and had gone to the department of mysteries looking for answers or at least a jumping point to start looking for them on her own.

She had believed them when they said they would help her and believed them again when they asked for her assistance, to think of all the people she could help - the people she could _save_ \- and she had believed them and thought she had a choice in the increasingly dangerous tasks she was being asked to complete until she had tried to say no and had been horribly reminded that the ministry had never been particularly trustworthy to begin with. 

Hermione wondered, not for the first time, pressing a hand into her blood-soaked side and closing her eyes, the damp curls that had escaped from her french braid now clinging unpleasantly to her cheeks and neck, when she had stopped caring about what was right and wrong. If it had been on the floor of Malfoy Manor, writhing about in her own excrement as a madwoman tortured her for information, lies bubbling past her lips like a fountain, desperate and unending; if it was well before that, when Harry Potter had flinched away from her hug that very first Christmas at Hogwarts and she had decided right then and there that she would do anything for the Boy Who Lived, protect him like the sibling she’d never had, and she’d done exactly that for the better part of seven years, up until the very moment she had stomped down defiantly on the last remaining time turner, grinding it beneath the heel of her dirty trainer to save his life one last time.

She would have done anything for Harry as an extension of her own sense of right and wrong and because doing what was right didn’t always fall on the right side of the law, didn’t always fit neatly in to what other people thought of as proper or accepted, and even if altering the time line was considered unlawful, she had justified to herself, how could it be wrong if doing so could save thousands of innocent lives?

_My dear_ , Croaker had echoed the sentiment as he laid his hand over her trembling ones, the soft, reassuring smile deepening the lines of his weathered face and distracting her from the avarice that made his pale eyes gleam bright. _How could it be wrong to help witches and wizards have a better life?_

Hermione pushed away from the wall as two German soldiers came barreling past, thrusting her wand out and sending a bludgeoning hex at the back of one’s head and ducking as the other turned with a shout. A purple light jumped from his wand tip and nearly collided with her chest. Her knee hit the floor hard to avoid it, the spell whizzing over the crown of her head and exploding against the wall behind her.She didn’t bother with a wand, adrenaline and hot magic surging through her veins as she lurched up and forward, catching the burly German wizard about the neck with her left hand, blood-stained fingers digging into skin slicked with sweat and roughened by a coarse beard. 

The man’s mouth fell open in what might have been a scream before it descended in to a gurgle. Time magic burned like fire across her fingers, distorting his neck in little unpleasant jerks as it tore through realities, melting his windpipe and the various tendons and corded muscles that held his neck together. He was dead within seconds, his bulging eyes locked on hers as life went out of his body.Hermione stumbled and yanked her palm free from the mess that had once been his neck and he hit the floor with a crash.

Time continued to move strangely around her, shadows of people moving through the room and broken furniture reassembling and dissembling itself, the sound of families sitting down for daily meals overlapping themselves as she struggled for control. She stumbled back another step, breathing hard, the soft golden magic catching in her hair and pulling it away from her flushed cheeks.

_How could it be wrong_? She repeated Croaker's words in disbelief, looking away from the dizzying vision of the room and down at her hands. Small and thin, _feminine_ the youngest Weasley had once insisted, _hands made for helping_ her father had promised, holding them up in his much larger palms as he smiled down at her, and Hermione closed her eyes tight to block out the sight of the blood creased in the lines of her palms and under her nails, telling herself to focus on her breathing and to calm the rapid beating of her heart. It had never been her intention to become a weapon; helping Harry, defending the school, fighting for her place in the wizarding world - it had been worth the sacrifice of laying down her reservations and becoming a child soldier, the ends justifying the means and so sure that she was fighting for the right side.

_But this_... 

Hermione took a deep breath, feeling the maelstrom of magic quietening around her as the rush of adrenaline left her. It cooled and retreated inward, the heavy weight of her hair settling around her shoulders once more and the cacophony of voices and sounds becoming the familiar stillness of the early morning hours.

She no longer knew what side she was on.  She wasn't a good person anymore. 

Hermione opened her eyes and looked tiredly around the destroyed dining room, taking in the bodies on the floor and the far-off sounds of muggle gunfire intermitted with wand fights. And she wasn’t sure if she had ever really known the difference between right and wrong, even before the battle of Hogwarts, when she had been so quick to bend the rules to suit her needs, but she supposed it didn't really matter. Her past had become a future that no longer existed, and there was only now and what she could make of it.

_There is only now._


End file.
